Drink driver vomited into breathalyser unit

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Published:12:38Monday 16 January 2017

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A man discovered unconscious at the wheel of a car in the middle of the road near Aughnacloy will discover his sentence at the end of the month.

East Tyrone Magistrate’s Court heard the defendant, 35-year-old Barry John O’Hagan from Upper Cranlome Road in Cabragh, plead guilty to a single charge of driving with excess alcohol in blood.

A report was made to police in the early hours of July 31 last year that an Audi car was facing the wrong way and parked in the middle of Carnteel Road. The driver was unconscious.

Police attended the scene and found the car partially across the centre white line and was causing an obstruction to motorists coming in both directions.

The defendant was in an ambulance nearby and paramedics described finding him in the car.

O’Hagan told the police that he had been drinking vodka and had been driving home.

He failed the roadside test and was arrested, subsequently providing a blood sample after vomiting into the breathalyser and causing it to malfunction. His sample was over two and half times the limit.

“That is a complete insult,” District Judge John Meehan told Mr Jarlath Faloon, the defendant’s solicitor.

“He was binge drinking and sought to drive home... so drunk that he couldn’t even stay awake.”